NetApp CEO George Kurian: From Humble Beginnings to Leading a Fortune 500 Giant | E124

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My goal in life was to have enough financial means that when my parents got older, that I would be able to take care of them, especially my mom.

You know, my mom's mom didn't have access to the best medical care that was available.

George Corian, from humble beginnings in Kerala, India, to becoming the CEO of NitApp, a Fortune 500 company driving some of the most remarkable transformations.

One of the really important challenges of being a CEO is to say no far more often than to say yes, because the way that you sharpen the focus of an organization is by saying no to 97% of the stuff.

I'm sure there's naysayers, I'm sure there's a lot of challenges.

How do you cope with these hard moments when people are not always like, yes, George, I think it's a great idea.

Yeah, especially when you're new to an organization and when that organization has been successful once.

You know, the important thing that I've learned in that is

George Corian, from Hummel Beginnings in Kerala, India, where he didn't even see a computer until his late teens, to becoming the CEO of NetApp, a Fortune 500 company driving some of the most remarkable transformation, scaling NetApp to what, $20 billion.

I'm really excited to speak with you, George, today.

Thank you for having me.

So I want you to take me back in time.

I traveled in India.

What was your childhood like?

Like, I mean, how did that early stage in your life shape you?

I was fortunate to...

get the lottery thick of parents.

You know, I think that the biggest blessing in my life was to be born to two wonderful human beings who were parents.

I was one of four boys.

We had, my mom especially has been such a profound influence on us.

You know, she had

the incredibly hard balance of making you feel entirely loved and trusted, but also to hold you incredibly accountable for your personal actions and have high standards.

She got that down to a T.

And I do want to talk about it because you also have a twin, Thomas, who is running Google Cloud.

Like, what a lottery.

Like, this is insane.

And to have both of you at the helm of some of the biggest tech organizations.

What do you think instilled that drive to make this happen?

I think my parents were both, you know, entrepreneurs in the big sense of the word, in that they

built their lives around creating opportunity for others, right?

And so my mom grew up in Sri Lanka.

She came to India by herself for college, which was highly unusual in the 1940s for somebody to do that.

And my dad grew up in a really poor home in Kerala and then, you know, became a successful engineer and so on.

And so we had really strong role models.

I have two older brothers, Jacob and Matthew, who are real trailblazers for Thomas and me.

So we were fortunate to be part of a family with really good role models.

We also were taught early on that we were incredibly fortunate that there were kids who were much smarter, much more talented than we were, who grew up in India, but did not have the opportunities we did.

And so our parents had the...

you know, they instilled the importance of duty and responsibility early on.

It's incredible, George.

And we'll talk about kind of how you stay humble throughout all of this, because I think this is something that I found incredibly inspiring.

But I think you did also grow up with a lot of tech.

Take me there.

Like, what was it like?

You know, the only media we had was shortwave radio, where we got to listen to the BBC and test matches, cricket matches on shortwave radio.

There was no internet.

You know, we didn't have a television till 1983 when we got one to watch the Los Angeles Olympics.

You know, there were no computers in India.

I'd never seen a computer till I came to college.

And I think the lesson from that was we spent a lot of time reading.

We spent a lot of time with my family playing games and doing other things.

And also, I think if you have the habit of learning, you can learn things, you know, even though you didn't start your life with them, right?

And I find it amazing.

My dad said to me at one point a few years ago, he said, listen, I find it amazing that you guys spend all your time looking at a television.

I should say that to my kids.

That's a quote to take.

So, and somehow both

you decide to move at age 17.

First of all, where did that idea come from?

And how do you take somebody that hasn't lived in the U.S.

and kind of land in this complete foreign place?

Take me there for a second.

I think it was the idea of my eldest brother.

He was 10 years older than us.

He had traveled to the U.S.

for work.

And so he told us, hey, you guys should think about becoming a well-rounded individual, not just particular skill, but actually learn how to learn, learn the disciplines of a classic liberal arts education.

And Indian education, at least at that time, was very focused on professional tracks.

And so you had to decide very early on what professional track you were on.

And so we were fortunate.

I would tell you, we didn't know much about the U.S., right?

You know, it's not like today where you can use the internet and just understand everything about what was going on.

So you had to write letters using snail mail and you would get application forms and you'd have to write on them and send it off.

And so we applied to a few schools and were super fortunate that Princeton gave both my brother and me some amount of scholarship and financial aid.

And then we had to work for the rest.

That's incredible.

And speaking of working for the rest, what are some of the jobs that you had while in college?

Like, I'm sure there's some funny stories around that.

Yeah, you know, I had to work a chunk while I was in undergrad school and when I got my MBA, because we didn't have the financial means to take loans, and it was hard to get loans at that time.

And, you know, we just wanted to pay off our education.

So

we did a lot of different jobs.

I worked in the college cafeteria.

I did work with construction crews that did work on campus.

I did research for professors.

I worked in the library.

I mean, you name it, I've done that job.

And it gave me an appreciation for people everywhere who are trying to make a living.

You know, you realize that everywhere there are people trying to give their family a better life.

And that's, there's respect for that.

And I love that.

I love that you shared that because I think that's so true.

I think sometimes we lose that perspective, especially when, you know, we're more successful.

So were you interested in tech right off the bat?

Because again, I remember at least in Israel, you could be two things.

You could be a doctor or a lawyer.

It took time to also add the engineering into the mix.

Like, what was it like, George?

It's quite similar.

You know, in India, you were either an engineer, a doctor, a lawyer, or a business person, right?

That was it.

I think that when I got to the U.S.

in 1986,

it was a year after the Macintosh was introduced, I got to work as the lab technician for one of the first academic Macintosh labs.

And at that time, printing a document itself was quite tricky.

And so all these professors would come down and say, Could you print my document?

And so I learned from that.

I was curious about what it was like.

And, you know, again, I had family members who told me, hey, this thing's going to be a big deal over the next, you know, 20 years of your life.

And so I was curious about it.

I would tell you, my favorite classes in college were actually liberal arts classes.

I liked engineering.

I liked mathematics.

I liked all of that.

But I loved some of the liberal arts classes.

Do you think you use it now?

How do you think that helped you?

Do you think it did?

I think it helps you kind of understand people.

It helps you understand the world.

It gives you a richness in life.

And it also helps you be curious about things that, you know, are not necessarily your professional career, but makes you, you know, understand the world and respect the world you live in.

It's a great perspective.

So then after college, at some point, you went, I mean, Oracle, McKinsey, Ekamike, Cisco.

Share a little bit, like, what were some of these roles for you?

And how do you think they all shaped you to the person that you are right now, George?

You know, I didn't have a master plan, right?

I mean, I never thought I'd want to be a CEO.

I like to build things.

I liked the idea of creativity and the, you know, building products and inventing things.

And, you know, my goal in life when I started my career was to have enough financial means that when my parents got older, that I would be able to take care of them, especially my mom.

You know, my mom's mom was one who passed and she didn't have access to the best medical care that was available.

My brother and I made a promise to each other that, hey, we were never going to let mom have that happen to her.

So there were no grand plans to be a CEO.

Oracle was a company that, when I joined it, was you know a teenager and it was super successful.

What I wanted to do was essentially work in software, business software.

They gave me a really good, you know, set of of skills on how to build commercial software.

My managers there were wonderful people.

They challenged me.

They also taught me the importance of working with clients and understanding what customers needs were.

And they switched me from engineering to the first stages of product management and

team leadership.

And so that was the first step.

I learned from then that, hey, I wanted to learn more about how businesses actually worked.

So I went and did an MBA at Stanford.

And then after that, I switched careers.

I went and worked for a management consulting firm called McKinsey.

They were incredibly helpful in me understanding how organizations work, not just businesses, but how organizations work.

What do top management think about?

How do you think like them?

How do you build the ability to identify what's wrong in a place and how do you fix it?

What are the two or three things that allow you to move quickly in addressing challenges?

And then from there, you know, different steps to get me here.

But there was no, I would tell you that there was no master plan.

So let's go there for a second, because I think every, you know, we usually learn more from the challenges than from actually the things that work really well.

Do you remember like a challenge in one of those, Oracle or McKinsey maybe, that you needed to basically taught you a lot?

Yeah, there were a couple of examples.

I would say that when I started my career, I was sort of two and a half years in or three years in when the chain of command that I was working for was suddenly terminated.

And I got asked to take on this project that I had no idea about.

I can tell you that, you know, when you're an immigrant with a visa that depends on your job and having no idea about what you were being asked to do, it was hugely stressful, right?

And I was fortunate that there were people around me that were, you know, really capable, that were willing to coach and invest in me.

And we were able to be successful there.

But I can tell you that the learning was not about the success.

The learning was how do you deal with challenge?

How do you deal with stress?

How do you deal with uncertainty along the way?

You know, in terms of McKinsey, I think the nice thing that they allowed me to do was to go and live in different parts of the world.

And they allowed me to assimilate into cultures that are quite different than the US

and so it made me appreciate that you know when you lead a global business today you got to think about how something that you do or say or think about policy wise translates across the globe and it brings a set of respect and sort of agility to your thinking i love every piece of it because i think when you're kind of thinking of you as the ceo of net app now like every sentence or every experience that you share it's something that I can stitch together.

It's like, oh, different cultures, got it, right?

Challenges, got it.

Because each one of them is basically what shaped you to become the CEO.

But so let's go there.

And I love this.

So 2011, I think you're joining NetApp and it wasn't doing so well.

So first of all, why did you decide to join a company that was, whether it's successful or not, I think at this point you're kind of in Cisco, right?

Share with me a little bit, like what was the reason?

I think two things, you know, when you leave a job or a project, you want to leave it with a mixture of anticipation for the future and excitement for the future and also good memories of the past, right?

So it should be bittersweet.

And so for me, you know, I had had a wonderful experience at Cisco, worked with lots of talented people.

You know, the cohort that I had joined and had been my cohort of both management as well as friends had all started to leave.

And so I began to think it was time for me to go do something new.

NetApp had worked with Cisco and had a good reputation as a good place to work.

We had

not taken on and built out the new technology that we needed to do for many years.

And so it was time to literally transform the product team, transform the company.

I think we had to move the founding team on.

And so I was was curious about that.

I was like, hey, the data world is a fascinating place.

Today, it's even more fascinating with AI.

You know, here was a company that had really good roots and traditions, but needed to, you know, be transformed to get to the next level.

And were you already thinking, C-suite, when you joined?

Because again, you joined in a different role, but were you kind of thinking through this?

Or did you take any specific steps that you can think of now that kind of built you toward that CEO role?

I think a lot of it was just, you know, we needed to solve some really hard challenges.

And so it was the excitement of, hey, let's go build the next great technology and reshape the company and get it on the, you know, accelerated path of innovation that we had always had, but had fallen off a little bit.

I really had no expectation to be CEO.

I was just really interested in how do you take our client base to the future, right?

And, you know, we have had amazing clients.

We have been part of the discovery of new particles.

We have been part of, you know, most family movies that bring families together around the world and where people laugh and cry together were built on our stuff.

And so it was seeing that.

capacity to change the world in our clients that was highly motivational to me.

I love that you're seeing not just the technology piece, but, you know, it's kind of like we say in LEAP, it's not about what we make, but what we make possible.

And I love that you're showing the possibilities here.

Talk to me about the first year, right?

You're joining this company.

Turning around a company is not easy, right?

Like there's a lot that is going on there.

Share with me a little bit, like what is the first year?

What does that look like?

You know, there were two or three things that we had to get right, which is, you know, there's a beauty.

in restoring something that was great once but had lost its shine.

You know, here in Silicon Valley, we're always on to the new, new thing.

But my children in San Francisco went to the Quaker school there, and the Quakers have this spirit of conservation and restoration.

And so there was a bit of that feeling, right?

At the same time, you needed the organization to realize that business as usual was not going to continue, right?

That we had lost the spirit of leadership and pace and motivation that was essential for us to succeed.

And, you know, we needed to make the reality of today really, really clear and stop thinking about, oh, we were great once and you're like, okay, that doesn't matter today, right?

So we had to change out some of the people that were from the founding generation that had probably needed to get to move to a new, new thing.

We brought to NetApp, you know, a set of disciplines and habits that are required when, you know, you want to hold yourself accountable to the highest standard.

And one of those important ones was what I learned from my cafeteria days.

So in the cafeteria,

especially in an industrial scale cafeteria, you have people coming, you got to serve them the meal, and then they go off and eat.

And then they put a whole bunch of dishes on the, like an assembly line.

And you got to sort those dishes, you got to rinse them off, and you got to like then load them in a dishwasher.

And so there's an assembly line.

And one of the things you notice in the assembly line is you want the best people at the front of the line because if you don't have that, you're going to have chaos at the back of the line.

One of the key things that we did when we got to NetApp was we actually implemented that in our software development process.

We brought our best engineers, not at the end of the line, but at the front of the line.

And it allowed us to speed up.

development to a much higher pace.

And we call that idea shifting left.

And so those were some of the big things.

You know, you had to get the team to understand what the reality was.

You had to make some hard people calls and, you know, up-level the team.

And then you had to teach them new habits and disciplines.

I love that example.

This is so good.

I'm writing it down.

But tell me, George, it's not simple, right?

Like, I'm sure there's naysayers.

I'm sure there's a lot of challenges when you come with these big innovative ideas, right?

And there's a pushback because people like the old ways, the old way used to work.

Share maybe a hard moment.

And how do you cope with these hard moments?

Because especially later as a CEO, but even when you just joined, like how do you cope with these hard moments when people are not always like, yes, George, I think it's a great idea, right?

Like there's some hard conversations to have.

Yeah, especially when you're new to an organization.

And when that organization has been successful once, you end up with a really hard challenge, right?

Because people say they, you don't understand things.

And then the second is, oh, we're great still.

And you're like, wait a minute, you're not performing as well as you need to.

And so you have to build trust with the team around you

and a common understanding of what the situation is.

And, you know, I think that in those changes, there's always 30, 30, 30, right?

30% of people are bought into the need for change.

30% of the people are naysayers.

And then there's the 30% in the middle that are like, hey, I'm going to wait to see what happens.

I'm not going to stick my neck out.

And so, you know, the important thing that I've learned in that is you got to lean into the first 30, the one that's bought in and drive the change.

And then you got to convince the middle 30 as you go along that, hey, this is the right thing to do and they will come along.

And then the last 30, you got to give them a choice, which is, hey, you either buy into the change or you can leave.

You know, very early in my tenure at NetApp, we had some really tough conversations.

And some of them were quote-unquote legends that bought in and came along.

And some of them, you had to say, it's time.

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Now back to the show.

But right before the 30, 30, 30,

there's a conviction that you need to build as a leader that this is the right thing.

And we'll talk about decisions, especially as a CEO, because that's a whole different level.

But how did you build those convictions to say, I think think I got this.

Like, I think I'm right.

I think I need to lead in this direction.

What gave you that conviction?

You know, I learned a few habits on how to build that conviction.

I think you want to first go talk to the frontline and the, you know, the high performers in an organization who are yearning for the organization to stretch to even higher standards.

And what you also realize is in transformation, the frontline employees are usually bought into the need for change because they have no political agenda.

It's the middle that's usually caught up in the, what does this mean for me?

Right.

And so, you know, you talk to people, you talk to clients, you talk to the sales organization and other stakeholders, and that gives you a picture.

And then you've got to develop pattern matching skills, right?

So I had developed a lot of pattern matching skills from the various steps in my career.

And I would just tell you that having a diverse set of,

experiences rather than being in a sort of a vertical ladder kind of career path allowed me to be able to bring so many different patterns.

And then you kind of put it into a narrative and you storytell to the T.

And you ask them, what would you do if you were in this position and bring them along on the journey?

I absolutely love this answer.

Thank you.

2015, you become a CEO, and I wanted to take us to that day/slash/weekend.

Take us there a little bit.

Was that expected?

It was completely unexpected to me.

I had no idea that I would be named CEO, first of all.

You know, the company hadn't been doing well for a while.

And the board asked me, hey, what is your plan?

And I felt it was important for me to tell the board, hey, listen.

I'll be here till the end of the calendar year.

I'm sure you're probably thinking about whatever leadership change you want to make.

And you know what?

I'll support the new CEO, whoever you bring in, until they are settled and, you know, they have their team.

But it's time for me to go do something else.

I still remember it was a Thursday in May, and I was, you know, headed to my 25th college reunion.

It was one of the first reunions I'd been able to go in in a good while.

And so I was headed out the door to the airport when My assistant called me and said, the CHRO wants to speak to you.

And I said, hey, listen, I've submitted all the year-end, you know, performance review paperwork from my team.

Everything is signed.

You know, I'm headed to the airport.

And she said, No, she really wants to meet you in person.

And I'm like, Oh my goodness.

So I walk over to her office and I'm in a rush.

So I'm like, Hey, Gwen, what is going on here?

I'm trying to get to the airport.

And she said, I need you to sit down.

I got a couple of board members here.

And I looked at her and I'm like, Oh, I'm certain I'm getting terminated.

Company hasn't been doing well.

You got two board members.

What the hell is going on?

And then they told me that they were thinking of making a change.

And they said, oh, we're going to want to name you interim CEO.

And I looked at them and I said, wow, what's going on here?

I had no idea I was going to be named CEO.

And I said to them, hey, I want to talk to my family about it.

We can talk about it next week.

I'm going to be back from my reunion.

And they said, no, we're going to name you CEO on Monday.

Remember this Thursday afternoon.

and so i said to them i think i need to talk to my mom to my wife and my kids and my mom and i did that and then i finally said yes to them uh and uh i think our board chair says you said to me i know what it's like when a boy asks a woman to marry him and she says wait i got to think about it so Needless to say, I had no idea that I was going to be named CEO.

And, you know, I would have been entirely happy with my professional career if I had not been named CEO.

George, what did you want to hear from your family and from your mom?

I think it was a two-way,

you know, discussion.

I think one was for me, it was important for them to think that this is a good thing for me to do, right?

Especially my wife and my mom.

And then for them to know that I would always be there for them.

I was going to be dad to my kids and, you know, I was going to prioritize them, not just, you know, get all consumed by the work.

That's a responsibility I work on every day.

You never get it perfect, but I think I've done, you know, made the trade-offs to make sure that dad is an even more important responsibility than CEO.

So talk to me a little bit.

I mean, a CEO role, like it's hard to imagine, especially in a big public company.

We'll talk about what you achieved there, but take me a little bit to that first year because it can get overwhelming.

And again, the company needed a big change.

You know, it's a lonely role.

Like it's lonely at the top.

No matter what you're going to do, it's lonely at the top.

Take me there for a second and maybe share like a scary moment or two.

Yeah, I think that being a public company CEO, as I tell my children, you get four report cards a year, not two.

So I say that you're lucky.

I got four a year.

I think the second is that you need to stay resilient and humble, right?

I think that both sides of the coin are important because there are quarters when you do well.

And, you know, many people think they're better than they are, really.

And so, humility is important to say, yeah, we had a great quarter, but you know what?

We got to put up another series of good quarters.

And then the second is when the chips are down, you know, the whole world says you're an idiot and you got to stay resilient.

And, you know, my wife's family is of Finnish and Swedish heritage.

They have a word called sisu that encapsulates that idea almost perfectly.

Strength, determination, you know, and sort of fortitude to navigate difficult situations.

So share maybe as a scary situation because, yes, you need a pretty thick skin.

You're going to get a lot of hate, whether you like it or not.

And how do you cope with it?

Yeah, I think that, first of all, I was keenly aware that I was a rookie CEO, right?

And so

you need

to be aware of the fact that you've got 12,000 or 13,000 people whose lives depend on you and you're a rookie right and so it gives you a sense of humility commitment and all of those things and then the second is you have to be super clear on what three or four things you're gonna do right and one of the really important challenges of being a CEO is to say no far more often than to say yes, because the way that you sharpen the focus of an organization is by saying no to 97% of the stuff.

And so a lot of people are unhappy because the prior administration would have said yes to a bunch of things and you're like, nope, we're not doing those 10 things, right?

If you have a cost structure problem or if you have a change problem, you got to take it on in the first six months of becoming a CEO.

You cannot afford to give up that first year.

And so we declared we needed to really adjust the cost structure of the company.

We needed to focus on one product line as the key to growth.

And so we had some really tough conversations and we committed to taking on a series of actions.

How scary is it?

You know, in some ways, when your back is up against the wall and you have no choice, it's not that scary, right?

I was fortunate that I had a group of friends around me who had come up the ladder with me, who knew me.

a long time before I was CEO, who could tell me the truth at all times and keep me grounded.

And they were just really good friends, right?

So even in the most difficult times, you could just go out and, you know, talk to them.

I think that, you know, the other part of it is when you're going through a large transformation, organizations can feel like it's a marathon.

And so what we decided to do was to break it up into nine-month sprints.

And so we took two and a half years to finish the change program.

But every six to nine months, we'd say, this chapter is done.

We're going to celebrate success.

And people would feel like, wow, that's great.

You know, and our investors were given metrics and everybody could celebrate attaining those goals.

And so what I would say is a transformation best executed is through a series of sprints.

Because the organization will get fatigued if you just say, hey, the three-year change.

That's brilliant.

And you talked about saying no, which I think is such an important piece in any business.

And it's probably one of the hardest pieces, especially now.

Like, I think there's like so many trends, so many things.

Like, again, we'll talk about what happened in between, but I'm just saying, like, it's, it can get overwhelming and it gets scary.

What are you not going to bet on?

Right.

Like, what are the pieces where you're going to say, okay, I see this and I'm not going to go after this.

How do you make some of these decisions?

What are like, what are some of the ways that you can handle this?

I think the first and most important thing is to understand its relevance to to you and your business.

And the second is, do we have something that truly makes us distinctive to capture that business opportunity?

And that, you know, makes it sort of the intersection of relevance and competence is the first filter I use.

And I would say that that filters out a good chunk of stuff.

I think the second is it's important to listen to clients, what their priorities are, because we made a set of strategic choices which were not entirely obvious.

In fact, nobody else in our industry chose to go in the direction we did.

And we have been really successful because of that.

And those choices at that time were counterintuitive.

It was obvious to us that our customers were going to do something, but it could be disruptive to our business.

And so we chose to lean into where our customers were going.

And then the third is to have the humility to know how many things your organization can really do at one time.

I would tell you the mistakes I've made is when you try to do too many things.

Always.

Every time I've made a mistake, it's been because I didn't have the discipline to say, hey, is this really the most important thing?

Or we're trying to do too many things.

And I think that's incredibly common, right?

Is there like a specific one that comes to mind that is kind of more public to share or not really?

You know, our results two years, three years ago were very difficult.

And it's because we tried to do too many things.

We had mediocre products in some parts of the market.

We

tried to transform the field.

And in the process, we told every salesperson to do five things at the same time.

We were fortunate that we caught it a couple of quarters in and we started to make the changes.

We exited a bunch of businesses that we were not really good at by selling them to other people who were better at it.

And we corrected the go-to-market model so that everybody knew I got to do this one thing and I better do it really well.

And now, I mean, you know, you look at the stocks and, you know, you somehow made it into a 20 billion plus dollars.

Like, it's incredible, George.

What do you feel are some of the biggest things?

And I think focus, focus, focus is what I'm hearing.

I think there's also how do you bring that team along?

So, what do you think are some of the things that made the biggest shift?

The idea that the hardest shifts are business model changes that you have to accommodate, right?

So, we we are in what's called data center technologies, data center infrastructure technologies.

Right.

You know, when we started our business, we would sell our technology to clients who would deploy it in their own data centers.

In the mid-2000s, the idea of cloud came along and it totally disrupted the classic data center model.

Clients were building, you know, that were moving all of their technology to the cloud.

They were buying it on a consumption basis.

Huge credit to Amazon for all of those innovations.

What we decided was if our clients couldn't need to use the cloud, we are going to solve one of the really challenging problems in the cloud in a really useful way.

And many of our competitors and many analysts and industry pundits were telling us we were crazy to go and work with the cloud providers because they were ultimately competing with us.

And we said, listen, if they're going to build all these data centers around the world, we're going to put our software in them.

Exactly.

And we have built built incredibly productive partnerships with them.

It takes a long time.

You have to build trust.

You have to build a win-win.

A win for them is a win for you.

You also learned that it's better to share a bigger pie than control a smaller one.

And so we had to teach the organization how to do that.

We had to change the organization's structure.

We had to change the compensation plans.

We had to change how we talk to investors about the business.

So a lot of things had to change.

Oh, this is so strong.

I love that you shared that.

What about AI?

How do you see that in the enterprise space?

What is AI readiness?

Like, how do you see all of that playing on?

We are, you know, focused on the data part of AI.

You know, there are three or four elements to AI.

There's the semiconductors that power the analytic tools.

Then there are the tools themselves, the

large language models and all of the sophisticated tools.

Those two have to act on corporate data to make the whole business successful, right?

We are the data part.

We hold an enormous amount of the world's data.

And so what we're doing is working with the industry to make that data much more easy to use with AI tools so that business can extract value from that.

And again, I feel like, you know, in this specific case, it's like the consumers have jumped on the AI wagon.

I think there's a little bit of time with the enterprise and how this is all forming.

How do you see that now?

Yeah, it's pretty much like the mobile phone, right?

Which is when Apple introduced the iPhone, the consumers jumped on it a lot faster than the enterprises.

The enterprises were sitting around with BlackBerries for a lot longer.

And so it's quite similar to that.

You know, I think that in the consumer world, the big technology providers are integrating AI capabilities into common workflows like search and mapping and transaction processing, like, hey, I want to look for commerce and things like that.

And so it's becoming a little bit transparent to end users.

In the business world, that

has still to come.

And so there's a good amount of work going on.

But I think, as we said, we think calendar 25 is the year that you start to see scaled proof of concepts.

26 is when those go into full production.

So tell me, and this is more of a curiosity, George.

So, we are extremely passionate about the future of careers and the future of work and how it's all changing, and how adaptability is becoming

one of the most important skills for the future of work.

How do you see it in a big organization?

Do you see anything that is changing on the hiring front and how you help your teams adapt, etc.?

Like, what is changing?

How do you see it?

I don't believe, and our organization doesn't believe that AI replaces the entry-level employee, right?

Because you're building an organization for multiple years, decades, right?

And so if the only people you have are experienced older employees, what happens when they reach retirement age?

So you want to bring younger employees.

And what we have seen is it, you know, accelerates their learning curve.

The second thing that we have always believed and implemented in the cultural norms of the company is trust is far more important than policy.

You know, there are lots of organizations, whenever there's something that's disruptive or challenging, that create a million rules about what not to do with that technology.

And that slows them down, it scares people, and it hinders adoption.

And frankly, learning.

Our view is that when there's something disruptive, you want to create an atmosphere in the organization where you know that your employees love the company and you want them to be able to try out new things without fear of reprisal, right?

Yes, you have some broad guardrails, but you want to encourage trial because that's innovation, right?

And so we've tried to do that.

We are encouraging everybody to use it.

We're saying, hey, you know what?

We won't get everything right, but that's okay.

What do you say?

So if somebody's listening to this and maybe they're kind of mid to late stage career, maybe they're senior managers, a director or whatever, what would you say to them?

Like, how can they go faster, be more relevant in an organization?

How do they adapt faster?

What should they do if they want to achieve more in their life?

I would tell you some lessons that I can share from my career, right?

I'm humble enough to know that there are so many different patterns.

And so I would just share three or four things.

I think one is choose your path.

Don't try to copy somebody else's.

You know, my twin brother and I being in the same industry, he has a different path than I do.

It would not be the right thing for me to copy his path.

The second is to go work for demanding people.

I have learned the most from people who have been incredibly demanding.

Yes, it's hard working for them, but you also push yourself and develop yourself.

And similarly, take on hard problems that everybody else steps away from.

Take on the hard problem.

I think that that builds confidence in yourself, but also in the organization that you are one that can do hard things.

And then the third is commit to always learning, right?

I think it's an easy thing to say.

You got to build a habit of building it into your practice.

And so I build it into my calendar that I'm going to actually spend time learning things.

Oh, I love these.

These are so good.

Such good tips.

So we talked about you as a father.

I'd love to go there.

I think you have two teens, 18, 21.

Am I right?

As a mom, like on one hand I want to give my kids everything I didn't have and I want them to have abundance I want them to have possibilities on the other hand I also want them to stay humble I don't want you know I don't want them to feel like they have everything I want them to stay hungry right how do you balance like humbleness hungry but still give them everything you have to give what does it look like it's important for kids to know that they are loved and cared for and you do that by by spending time with them.

You do that by listening to them.

You don't need to give them anything other than your time and your care.

And I think that's the biggest gift you can give somebody that they feel important to you.

You know, I think beyond that, the things that at least we have tried to do, my wife and I, and we have shared values around it is to make our children understand and appreciate how lucky they are.

Yes, they've worked hard.

Yes, they've met their commitments and all of that.

But to also just get people to understand how lucky they are.

And the way that we do that is by actually going out and helping them see the world as it is rather than in a sheltered bubble.

And also to travel the way that most people travel, right?

It's like, hey, you know what?

We're not going to stay at the topmost end of a hotel or we're not going to fly private.

We're just going to go and travel exactly the way that everybody else travels because it's good enough for us.

And my kids refer to that in the terms that my dad used to use.

It's called Janatha class.

Janatha is the Indian word for people class.

And so they always say dad flies Janatha class.

I love that.

So if you needed to go back in time, Dewards, to your younger self, to maybe you at 17, 18, 20, what would you tell yourself?

I think that I would just tell myself that Be gentle with yourself.

There will be some really hard times and there will be some moments where you feel that you should have a lot of regrets.

You know, life's a complex thing and you'll make mistakes and it's okay.

You learn from them and keep moving on.

Oh, that's so beautiful.

George, thank you.

I knew it's going to be an incredible conversation.

Thank you for inspiring, for what you do, for the incredible results that you have in ADAP.

And it's just inspiring to see.

Thank you.

I've been blessed.

You know, God's been good to me.

I've had wonderful parents, wonderful mentors, and great teams around me.

So, thank you.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you.

God bless.

I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did.

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Now, also, if you're feeling stuck or simply want more from your own career, watch this 30-minute free training at leapacademy.com/slash training.

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See you in the next episode of the Leap Academy Wizzy Lana Golan Show.